A new private rocket is set to launch into space for the first
time today (April 17), potentially marking a leap forward for
American commercial spaceflight.

Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned
Antares rocket is slated to blast off from Virginia's
Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) located at NASA's Wallops
Flight Facility at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) Wednesday, helping pave
the way for eventual cargo missions to the International Space
Station.

Orbital signed a $1.9 billion deal with NASA to fly eight
unmanned supply missions using Antares and the company's robotic
Cygnus spacecraft. Cygnus and Antares could be launched together
on a demonstration mission to the space station as early as June,
company officials say. [ How
to see the Antares Rocket Launch ]

Here are five things you might not have known about Antares:

Antares' engines were made for the moon

The Antares rocket's first stage uses 2 Aerojet AJ26 rocket
engines fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene (RP-1). The AJ26 is
based on the NK-33 engine, which was originally developed to
launch Russia's giant N-1 moon rocket in the 1960s.

N-1 was the Soviet answer to America's Saturn V
rocket, used to launch astronauts to the moon during the space
agency's Apollo program. The Soviet heavy-lifting rocket,
however, was never launched successfully.

It is the largest rocket ever to launch from
Virginia

Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore has
traditionally been NASA's launching ground for small sounding
rockets and high-altitude balloon missions, but Antares' launch
from MARS is helping broaden the site's scope.

Engineers refurbished an old launch pad to accommodate Antares,
whose launch today is perhaps the highest-profile liftoff from
Wallops since its establishment in 1945. Most big manned and
unmanned American missions have historically been run from
Florida's Cape Canaveral, including the space station cargo
launches of Orbital's competitor, SpaceX.

Weather permitting, today's Antares launch could be seen as far
south as Charleston, S.C. and as far north as Portland, Maine.
The rocket should be visible as a bright streak of light in
Washington, D.C., assuming clouds doesn't get in the way.

Antares' name has a long space legacy

The rocket's name comes from a long cosmic legacy.

"Antares" is the name of a red supergiant star in the
constellation Scorpius. It's one of the largest stars ever found,
with a diameter several hundred times that of the sun. The star
is about 600 light-years from Earth, and is among the top 20
brightest stars in the night sky.

The Apollo Lunar Module used during the Apollo 14 mission was
also named "Antares." The module brought a two-person crew down
to the surface of the moon in 1971, making the "most precise
landing to date," according to NASA reports.

Orbital Sciences is a key player in missile
defense

The company that developed Antares has also executed about 50
major launches for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the Air Force
and the Navy to create a robust missile defense system in the
United States.

Orbital
Sciences creates target vehicles used in simulations to test
the missile defense systems. The firm also manufactures
"interceptor boosters" that can cut off possible missile launches
aimed at the country.

The Cygnus mass simulator being flown on Antares today will
deploy a few tiny satellites for a commercial customer and NASA
before burning up harmlessly in the Earth's atmosphere.

The satellite payload includes the Dove-1 nanosatellite for a
commercial client and two versions of NASA Ames Research Center's
Phonesats, which are about the size of a coffee cup.

Editor's note: If you snap a great photo of
Orbital's Antares rocket launch that you'd like to share for
a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your
name and location to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.